Monday, April 4, 2011

The X-Fire Game: So, who is sticking around?

I think this is a great theme for todays posting. As we look at the games on the charts, while 30+ days wind down for a new MMO launch; who is going back to their old games? And who is sticking around for the newbie on the block?

A concern with todays numbers deals with the fact that Trion threw me a whiffle ball out of left field called a "Free Trial Weekend for Friends". So, when we look at todays chart, we get what should have been the Sunday where we should see the real stats for subs, taking us into...well, crap, what are the REAL numbers?

April 3rd was the renewal date for subs in the US market for Rift (not sure for EU due to their later starting date), but, Trion decided to do something no other MMO has done, and give all members codes to hand out to friends to try the game during it's 30 days free for buyers.

I guess all I can say is stay tuned, and hopefully NEXT week we will get some fun data to look at.

On with the show. (NOTE: Except for Rift, the numbers we'll be comparing are from two weeks ago, as last week was a special solo edition. This will be interesting to see how a weeks hiatus stacks the games on the charts).

Rift -4493 ( 4730 ↓)

EvE Online - 1938 (1988 ↓ )

Lord of the Rings Online- 1959 ( 1977 ↓ )

Aion-1919 ( 1948 ↓ )

Dungeons & Dragons Online - 371 ( 401 ↓ )

Star Trek Online- 318 ( 304 ↑ )

Age of Conan - 281 ( 275 ↑)

Champions Online - 257 ( 304 ↓ )

Warhammer Online - 168 ( 164 ↑ )

DC Universe - 58 ( 75 ↓ )

Final Fantasy XIV - 119 ( 0 ↑ )

Well, lets see...

First up is Rift. A large drop. I expected this though. People's subs would expire, players would leave...so, it is inevitable. But, lets really look at these numbers carefully. Even with the drop, Rift still garners more than double the amount of players of the #2 MMO, EVE. That is nothing to sneeze at. But, of course, next week the "free trial" will be gone (I assume...Trion is a savvy marketer, and I think they deserve kudos for that), and then we may see some real stats.

Across the board, most Fantasy MMO's are down. Lord of the Rings, Aion, yet, two surprises. Age of Conan and Warhammer Online. Both are of course rolling along the bottom of the barrel here. But, AoC actually moved up in the ranks to overtake Champions Online, which has continued it's downward fall. WAR added a few back...I assume those who left for Rift, and saw it's PvP will never be RvR (even though forum posts pleaded for such a move by Trion).

Final Fantasy XIV is back, but lower than when it left. About 128 players were on the last time I did the report (about a month ago, since the Japan Earthquake). I am not sure how they can really recover, and FFXIV may be the new bottom feeder on our charts. Time will tell if any of the upcoming changes will affect populations.

***

Rift - 3448 ( 3430 ↑) players

EvE Online - 945 ( 958 ↓)

Lord of the Rings Online - 847 ( 949 ↓ )

Aion - 525 ( 532 ↓ )

Champions Online - 253 ( 285 ↓ )

Dungeons & Dragons Online- 232 ( 296 ↓ )

DC Universe - 191 ( 212↓ )

Star Trek Online- 114 (113 ↑ )

Age of Conan - 123 ( 89 ↑ )

Warhammer Online - 59 ( 67 ↓ )

Final Fantasy XIV - 136 ( 0↓)

Lets see what took place this weekend...

As I continue to state...Raptr is just odd right now in how games track here compared to X-Fire. But, in all honesty, as I continue to watch Raptr, I wonder if the continued fall of players in all games on X-Fire is due to the fact so many are leaving the service. Some may actually be coming to Raptr. All I know is Raptr never jives with X-Fire...but, hey, thats ok. Lets just check the stats, shall we?

Rift is actually up here. I assume this would be a by-product of that free time this weekend. Next week will be the kicker. But, as I keep saying, Rift numbers are exponentially higher than most other MMO's (besides that one behemoth). I still think Rift is riding success for now...and time will be the key if they can keep up their momentum.

Games continue to tumble here, except for Star Trek who released Foundry recently and if I am not mistaken, a new update. Age of Conan is also up. they have been in MMO news quite heavy the last couple of weeks thanks to an update to the game engine. The game just runs better and looks better for everyone. I expect this is translating well into more players. I hope they keep going and can put more work into this title.

FFXIV returns...but is down quite a bit. The last Raptr numbers was 178 players; so, down a bit. We will continue to watch this and see if these can go up. Raptr seems to like FFXIV much more than X-Fire (or Metacritic, or...any other number of MMO bloggers, websites, etc)

***

Now, whether the month of April has anything to do with changes on our charts (warmth has come, the ball of orange death is out and spring break cometh) or it is a true effect of the Rift in place in MMO land...most MMO's continue a downward move.

But, how does the monster in the room stack up this past week?

World of Warcraft X-Fire chart April 3rd - players 34,325 (34,976↓)

Hmm. Still a small step for mankind leaving behind the huge addiction known as WoW. But, it is happening. Now, again...this could be the X-Fire loss effect. But, to see a down note for WoW is pretty good. Not that I hate WoW, but for this market to move forward, we need to see people be willing to leave this game behind.

I hope this is true is all I can say.

And thats it for this weeks X-Fire game. Stay tuned, as (hopefully this time) next week should be the REAL stats and how Rift held up after the 30 days.

I'm not sure how valid many of those numbers are, especially for Raptr. I know Raptr is not working correctly for many people with Aion and for about two weeks it didn't record any of my Aion sessions, but the most recent update seems to be working again. And I've never been able to get it to work with some games, like Free Realms.

Even stranger, Raptr will sometimes just not record certain games for awhile, I saw this over the weekend with Guild Wars, Aion, LotRO and some non-MMO games; sometimes it would see the session, other times nothing, even after rebooting; then suddenly started working an hour later.

I may ditch it at this rate, as I just wanted it to see how much time I was spending playing stuff.

I expected a drop for Rift too after the first month, it seems inevitable for any MMO. But I'm pleasantly surprised to see that it's not so big a drop at all! Rift has me for at least another two months; I went with the 3-month plan. But I foresee myself playing well beyond that as well.

Just so you know, not all Rift subscribers got that email to invite friends. It wasn't sent out to all subscribers, only a select number. In the official announcement on the forums, it says something like, "If you didn't get one of our emails, don't worry! Tell your friends to check our Facebook and Twitter feeds for more ways to get codes."

I'm not sure how many of those promo emails they sent out. I didn't get one, and only a handful of my guildmates did.